The APRO Bulletin was the official publication of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization which was founded in 1952 by Jim and Carol Lorenzen. APRO continued through the 1980s and below is a nearly complete collection of the APRO Bulletins for research use.
Special thanks to APRO Bulletin Editor Richard W. Heiden for curating this collection.
Letter from Richard:
I started reading Coral and Jim Lorenzen’s books soon after I got interested in UFOs in the late 1960’s. But I didn’t join APRO until the summer of 1970. In his letter of Oct. 4, 1977, Jim Lorenzen asked me to become Assistant Editor of the APRO Bulletin, and I accepted. Actually, I did not have any input in editorial decisions, which would have been difficult in any event, considering that I lived in Milwaukee (as I still do), and there was no Internet in those days. My function was basically to translate correspondence and articles from Spanish and Portuguese, which I continued to do until the end of APRO—besides contributing other articles and book reviews.
In about 1986, when Coral Lorenzen’s health was failing, she asked me if I wanted to take over the Bulletin. Unfortunately, at that time I was about to start grad school, so I had to decline. I think she asked others too, but apparently no one wanted to assume the task that Coral had started on her own in 1952. After Coral’s death, Bob Marsland (APRO’s Deputy Director,who lived in Tucson) photocopied for me a collection of the back issues, which was my first opportunity to read the very earliest issues. (Bob is in the group pictures that appear in the 29:12 issue, p. 7; and in the 31:2 issue, p. 2. He passed away in March of 2009.)
I met Coral Lorenzen five times. First in August of 1973 when Jim was in Chicago on business (he was out tending to the business when I visited Coral at their motel near the airport). Again at the UFO Congress in Acapulco in April 1977; at the International UFO Congress sponsored by Fate Magazine in Chicago in June 1977; and at the APRO symposium in Cleveland in June 1981. And finally in June of 1983, when I visited the Lorenzens in their home in Tucson. Coral was a strong-willed, independent woman whose control of APRO unfortunately did not allow for sharing responsibilities to the extent that others could move right in when her health and Jim’s deteriorated so as to prevent their continuing with their organizational responsibilities. That is, not until it was too late.
In later years, the bulletins came out two at a time, with a mailing wrapper that also included editorial material. Each mailing wrapper was scanned following the FIRST of the pair of issues that it contained. At least three issues (including 32:10 and 32:11) were mailed singly, and would be recognized as such only because the NEXT issue has another wrapper scanned afterwards. Another pair of issues also had a 4-page questionnaire with it, which was scanned between the first issue and the wrapper.
A friend suggested that I edit a compilation of APRO Bulletins. The idea returned to my mind occasionally, but I never did anything with it. One thought I had about the project was to correct errors that had appeared in the original bulletins, and perhaps add important relevant information from other sources—such as if a particular case turned out to have an identification.
Of course, with the Internet age, it is now possible to put the entire file of the APRO Bulletins online for all the world to access. That is what you find here. In a few cases, I did note corrections to published typos in my own articles. However, the notations in the issues of the bulletin’s first few years were presumably made by Coral herself.
Richard W. Heiden
Misc.
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1975 and later
(Note: Some of the issues had the wrong volume number printed on them. The links and file names have the correct volume and numbers.)
Vol. 29-8 September 1981 – Photos
